Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/177

Rh afford protection, which come one knows not whence nor when, and which are invulnerable because invisible. Any nation suitably equipped with such means of defense would be impregnable on the side of the sea.

Every submarine boat with a single exception, so far as the writer knows, has been designed solely or at least chiefly with reference to use in war. That exception is the 'Argonaut,' designed by Simon Lake and owned by the Lake Submarine Company.

The 'Argonaut' is intended for peaceful pursuits and is built and equipped accordingly. Her purpose is to save property, not to destroy it. Hit work is to be quiet and prosaic, but none the less efficient and valuable. The success of her inventor and his company depends not upon the favor of governments and department officials, but upon the successful performance of forms of work which have a direct commercial value.

She is built to travel on the bottom and is provided accordingly with wheels like a tricycle. Except in war, there is scarcely a single valuable object which can be served by navigation between the surface and the bottom. The treasures of the deep are on the bottom. On the bottom are the sponges, the pearls, the corals, the shell fish, the wrecks of treasure ships and coal ships and the gold-bearing sands. On the bottom are the foundations of submarine works, explosive harbor defenses and cables. To the bottom the ’Argonaut’ goes, and on it she does her work.

Propelled at the surface by her gasoline engines, she looks much like any other power boat. The upper part of her hull is that of ordinary surface-going boats. Underneath she has the ovoidal form. Conspicuous on her deck are the two vertical pipes by means of which during submergence fresh air is drawn from the surface and the